


In the Heat and Dust

by Teawithmagician



Series: Logan and Rogue [4]
Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Everyone is Dead, Explicit Language, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Logan (2017), Logan (2017) Spoilers, Pain, Post-Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 00:59:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10293800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: Rogue is alive, and remembers, Logan is alive and regrets. Logan keeps things together though he hates to do it, and Rogue just doesn't care anymore. All they have are memories that make them hold on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> *Alternate Rogue/Logan storyline for Logan movie (2017)  
> *Contents one major spoiler for the movie  
> *OTP

1.

 

“What have I become, my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end.”

 

She starts to sing as the sun, bright red and yellow, sets over the rooftops. The heated air is full with smells of fried onions and rancid oil, and Logan sweats. The dark smears of sweat come through the shirt under the jacket at his chest and the armpits.

 

“Don't sing it to me,” Logan shakes in a fit of coughing. The hair at his knuckles he sticks in the mouth turned salt&pepper, there is more salt&pepper in Rogue's hair.

 

“What should I sing to such an old mean beast like you?” Rogue gives him a napkin. There is always a napkin in her backpack. Logan presses the napkin to his mouth and spits.

 

There's a badge on Rogue's blouse, Daphne's Rite & Funeral Services. Still, she prefers to work the ones she can do no harm even accidentally.

 

“Come over,” she says. “I don't want to be alone today. Also, you can tell my homeowner I'll pay later this month. When you tell it to her, she is eager to please.”

 

“Is she afraid of me?”  
  


“No. She likes you,” Rogue smiles distantly, exposing her crevice. “She says you're an old fashioned gentleman with style, though ill-tempered a bit. I think she wants to steal you.”

 

Logan spits blood into the napkin, crumples it and throws it away, in dark green stunted bushes of jasmine grown on the perimeter of the house. Kids are playing on the other side of the street and Logan shouts: “Stay away from my car, little bastards!”

 

“Come over,” Rogue repeats and makes a gesture, her hand slicing the air. Logan looks at her, his eyes screwed as the sun sends its last rays over the signboard.

 

“That's a bad idea,” he says. “That's a...”

 

“I know: you have work to do. Work only you can do. The most important work in the world, taking care of a half-corpse,” Rogue speaks impatiently, putting the backpack on her shoulder. “That's not an excuse.”

 

“I make excuses to no one."

 

The window on the seventh-floor cracks open, the face of a woman at the age of seventy, her pale lilac hair wrapped over mint curlers, appears. She moves her eye-glasses from the forehead to the nose and steps back into the darkness of the room.

 

“You know what?” Rogue says, taking the keys out of her backpack pocket. “I'm sick and tired of your stubbornness. I need to find a man.”

 

“You can kill another man with a single touch. You can't kill me easy like that,” Logan grumbles.

 

Rogue gives him a look and walks up the front door, keys ringing in her hand. Logan swears out loudly, gets up and limps after her, groping the eyeglasses in a case. He finds in in the inner pocket of his jacket.

2.

 

 

“That must be enough to pay the rent,” Logan puts a few dollars on the shaky stand in the hallway when they come into the flat.

 

The hallway is narrow like a pencil case. Logan doesn't like to take off his boots, but Rogue tells him to. She looks at the money, and when looks back at Logan.

 

“Take it away,” Rogue says, getting rid of her shoes.

 

“You need them,” Logan pulls off the boots. It hurts to lean forward, it hurts to walk after you've been static for a while. The joints are crackling like mad and it feels like dead cats in the mouth.

 

“I don't need your money,” Rogue takes the money from the stands and pushes it into Logan's jacket pocket. Logan shoves her hand away, but Rogue grabs his collar and pushes the money violently.

 

“Stop it!”

 

“Or what would you do? Rip me apart?” Rogue looks at Logan, the white lock of hair falling on her face. There are so many wrinkles around her eyes, on the corners of her lips.

 

“Just shut up and take the goddamn money,” Logan finds the crumpled dollars in the pocket and throws them on the stand. “I need them, too. Be a good girl once in your fucking life.”

 

“Why are you so sure my life is a fucking one?” Rogue crosses her arms on her chest. “I mean, look at yourself, who have you become? You've been Wolverine, and you've given up, you've given up everything...”

 

“Shut the fuck up!” Logan yells. Two claws out of three pops out of his hand. Two out of three, he keeps that in mind, but rather than noticing he sees his arm making half a circle and pierces the wall.

 

“That was my bathroom,” Rogue says irritatedly. “And you have given up, that is true. Why did you let him make you lose, James? You were strong and brave, and no once could stop you, and it was you who have given up first.”

 

“I don't let him harm anyone,” Logan says, breathing heavily. “That's all I can do. That's more than you can do. Having a work in the city, huh. Just like me. So who has given up. Who has given up?”

 

Logan pulls claws out of the wall. Cracks run up and down it like a spider web. Logan thinks angrily that it means more money for the repair. Everything demands money neither him nor Rogue has. Demands strength he has no more.

 

“Dead or alive, I don't want to talk about him,” Rogue purses her lips. “Everything is over know. But we mustn't be the last ones. There can be more. There must be new of us. And you waste your time on a...”

 

“He's old, weak and crazy as fuck. He wets pants and takes me for Magneto when I don't bring him drugs for more than a week to keep him calm. There are no mutants anymore. We are the last,” Logan cuts her off.

 

“Is it pus?” Rogue asks, looking at Logan's knuckles. Logan doesn't answer.

 

3.

 

Rogue puts on latex gloves when washes Logan's hand under the water. She tells him he can't keep it inside all the time. A waitress in the bar who gave Rogue her drink fainted as they fingers came in contact.

 

“Poor girl just wanted to be flirty,” Rogue says, smearing the ointment on Logan's knuckles. He doesn't argue anymore, he drinks beer.

 

“Leave some for me,” Rogue says, and Logan handles it to her. Rogue drinks, drops of beer sliding from her lower lip from her neck. Logan takes Rogue's wrist higher than the glove and starts.

 

It hits him from inside, the darkness what takes. Logan screams silently as it rips him open, finds the smallest pieces of life what keeps him together and sucks it out like a shaky teenage lover sucks on the lips of his girlfriend.

 

“Logan!”

 

He can't let go even when unclasps his fingers. It blows up in his head, making him open eyes and wheeze. The darkness has gone. Logan sits in the armchair wheezing and squishing like and old fart. Rogue leans over.

 

“Logan, I told you not to do it that way. I can't always be in control.”

 

"He can't, too."

 

Logan reclines on the armchair and closes his eyes. He knows that Rogue watches him silently, the way he breathes and his eyelashes start.

 

“It's okay,” he says. “You hit me harder, you know. When you have no one to suck the life out of, you become squishy.”

 

“Professor used to be our only hope, but now, Logan, he is a threat,” Rogue says, clenching her fingers on his wrists.

 

"They used to say you were a threat, too. I've never listened to them."

 

When Rogue saddles him, Logan puts his hand on her neck, his thumb pressing on her cheek. Rogue breathes slowly, her eyes half-closed. She moves her finger across his face like a child drawing a picture.

 

“I do what I must. I hate to say that, but it's true,” Logan says, looking Rogue into the eyes.

 

"I know. That doesn't mean I agree with you, but I know."

 

Rogue unbuttons his shirt carefully, opening his bare chest. Her hands are caressing his scars, every one of them she knows and remembers. Logan remembers, too.

 

He remembers everything, from the moment the time has stopped and everyone froze. He remembers they started to fall on the floor, one by one. Rogue was outside, on the training ground. He could reach her or reach the Professor first. But Rogue got the factor he took out from Logan, and everyone else didn't.

 

4.

 

Logan can't come. He puts Rogue on her knees with her elbows on the seat of the armchair, she turns him on his shoulder blades and chokes with both her hands, but all he thinks about is death. It's all useless.

 

Logan hammers her, makes her jumps on his hips when the fit of coughing makes him smother. Logan sits up and coughs his lungs out, while Rogue is slapping him on the spine until he spits out a dark red piece of sputum Rogue grabs with two fingers.

 

“It's more blood,” she says.

 

“Let go, it's disgusting.”

 

“It's not the most disgusting part of you I ever held in my hands,” Rogue turns the sponge-like piece smelling with vomit as the electric streetlight oozes into the room. “What's wrong with you?”

 

“I'm old.”

 

“Not. Not that.”

 

“I'm old and scar-tissued. That's it.”

 

“Not that,” Rogue gets up and throws his sputum into the sink. His fingers run down his hair to the back of his head and Logan presses his head against her hip. “You are very ill. What's wrong?”

 

“It's adamantium,” Logan says, holding Rogue's thigh. He remembers once he has done it the same way. He was sitting on the chair and she stood next to him. Her belly was big and tight like a drum, Logan looked at it and wondered if he was blessed or cursed with what they had done.

 

Rogue put her hand on his shoulder, her other hand on her belly.

 

“Sometimes I wonder if I did a right thing. Hank says it's okay as far as the organism takes child as a part of it, my abilities will do him no harm, but... What if it changes in parturition? I will lose child and I will lose time. My place is with the others, not in the countryside.”

 

“That's bullshit,” Logan said, pressed his head against her belly. “You know the school. Everything happens every time, and you are not the one to carry it. They have Storm, and Hank, and Professor. I betcha they will handle it.”

 

The moment he pressed his head to Rogue's belly something kicked his head from the inside. The little bastard had an attitude, Logan laughed.

 

That night they slept in the terrace as it was too stuffy in the cottage, and Rogue needed fresh air. Logan carried the mattresses down the stairs, the pillows and the blankets. He even strung up the mosquito net, being close to tearing it apart once or twice.

 

“Come over,” he called Rogue, and she answered from the living room, “Later, I'm trying to read”

 

“The hell you are trying, I said come over, I got you a nice sleeping place.”

 

Rogue didn't come, and Logan brought her in his arms. He showed her the place and make her look at mosquito net, and Rogue kissed him and told him it was ok. “It's not ok, it's perfect,” Logan said grumpily. He was happy.

 

5.

 

“Sometimes I think that I still love you,” Rogue says, lying to Logan closely. "Even though you've stayed with him. I've lost everything, but... he was ill then. He is ill now. Still, you do no right thing hiding him. Someday he will kill you, too."

 

“I know.”

 

“I know what you know,” Rogue caresses his hair, and he moves forward, buries his face in her shoulder. “I wonder how it would be if we all survived. How it would be now.”

 

“Look here,” Logan starts from the old point of arguing they talked over and over, “It is that it is now. Fuck the past. Fuck the future. Nothing can change. Two hundred years of memories, I'm sick and tired of it. You are alive. I am alive. We would have been better dead, but we are not.”

 

“We were no bad parents,” Rogue proceeds. She never listens to him. “We did everything we could. We showed our son the world, we taught him, we trained him. He would have become a good man. And a gifted X-man.”

 

“It was your idea to keep him at school instead of giving him that shitty holiday trip,” the words still hurt. Logan used to think of it over and over, yet there's no anger left now.

 

“All bad ideas are mine, all good are yours. Your idea was to get to Professor first, and to us - later. I could not give him the power I had, as I cannot give. But he could try to connect to you and to make it, but you decided to get to Professor first.”

 

There's no hatred in Rogue's words, too. It hurts, but it doesn't burn like it used to.

 

The little one with brown hair and brown eyes. His ability was to conduct power of others, to make them stronger, and to use the odds to protect himself. As well as he didn't have Logan's regeneration factor, he didn't have his temper. The boy he was calm, he was polite, he was attentive. A+ student, teachers' favorite. Logan couldn't even believe it was his own son.

 

“I don't want us to die, but I want Professor,” Rogue says quietly. “He is not the man we used to know and you can't always keep him sleeping or high not to make that he has done again. I don't want to kill him, but when he's dead, we are free.”

 

“We are never free,” Logan closes his eyes. “Now sleep. Tomorrow I attend the funeral.”

 

"Who's now?"

 

“Some lady needs a driver and a limousine for her. I'll be her driver, I'll hold the umbrella. No screaming and swinging claws.”

 

“James, tell me...”

 

“What?”

 

“If we had a chance to raise a child once again, would you give a try?”

 

 

 


End file.
